Handmade at the Farm

Teaching Children Good Eating Habits

If you know my son in real life, then you know he is quite a character and has been since birth. He is funny and creative. He is full of energy and full of surprises. He also is the pickiest eater you have EVER seen. If he had his way he'd start off each day with donuts and chocolate goat's milk, followed by Hot N' Ready pizza for lunch and some Bush's Fried Chicken for dinner. Before Christmas, I decided it was time for the boy to eat some vegetables, possibly even green ones. I had high hopes. So to accustom his taste buds to flavor (since her prefers the pasty glue flavor of white flour), I began to add finely chopped or pureed veggies to all his foods. If I made chicken soup, I finely chopped carrots, celery and onions and added them in. He was suspicious of the orange flecks, but they were too small to pick out so he ate them anyway. So through the month of December he had the tiniest ever vegetables in various things without his knowledge or consent.

Of couse then came the holidays and all the processed, sugary foods you can find. To top it all off, the goats were dry and he was stuck with frozen goat milk. He dearly loved the goat's milk fudge, chex mix, hot cocoa with double marshmallows and spray cool whip. He especially liked that Meme was off work and had a bulk size box of Pizza Rolls. By the end of the month his face was in a rash from his excess sugar comsumption as well as drinking homogonized cow milk (which he is allergic to). It was time for him to detox. January was quite a shock to this carb loving boy. Here are some foods that he got to enjoy.

Poor Man's Cabbage
Taco Salad
Sprouted Lentil Soup
Chili
Roasted Turkey with baked potatoes

The first night he tried saying that he wasn't hungry. In his defense, the cabbage smell probably did take away his appetite. He ate a few token bites because it was required and woke up ravenous for breakfast. Fortunately, he's always like breakfast, so he filled up on eggs. At lunch he was surprised with whole wheat tortillas for his nitrate free ham. Then he found that for a snack we only had whole wheat mini bagels with all natural peanut butter instead of his beloved and hydrogenated Jif. Oh...he thought that maybe his world was falling apart and "how come the container says creamy but it feels like nuts are in the peanut butter?"

He really did enjoy watching the lentils sprout on the counter.. right up to the point where I dumped them into the soup pot. The look on his face was priceless. He was shocked that you could eat your school work. I reminded him that sprouting helps with digestion and increases vitamins and enzymes. A fact that was lost on this 7 year old. Due to the fact that it was heavily seasoned with cumin and garlic, he liked the flavor, but not the texture. I gave him a few corn chips and he pretended it was mexican food from Taco Bell. It's a good thing God gave him a sense of humor and a good imagination.

Chili and Roast Turkey were no problem at all. Meat is his second favorite food. And baked potates, being a carb are his favorite. So you see it hasn't all been bad and he hasn't starved. After this week I was beginning to feel proud. I was proud that he'd eaten a few vegetables, proud that he'd had a relatively good attitude the whole time, and proud that he'd tried new things like sprouted lentils. And of course "pride comes before the fall." Proverbs 16:18

Last night I found a small tupperware of powdered sugar from the pantry on a low stool in the kitchen. Miss J walks by and says how yummy that white stuff is. I ask, "Did you eat this? Do you know it is bad to eat sugar alone? It suppesses the immune system." (Yes, I really did say this, but my kids are used to me. They don't think I'm weird because they don't know any better.

) She says that she wasn't eating it, Mr. C was. So just when I thought he was on the breaking point of finally learning some good eating habits, I find he is surviving on powdered sugar.